Wigan Album

Fourth player from the left is George Woosey, whom I worked with at Johnpit in the Electrical Dept. He later played for Keithley, then Barrow before he retired...Lived in Hindley

Ernie Ashcroft 4th from left back row, and no mistaking Ken Gee, seated.

The player back row second left Bill Blan

What really amazes me about the old photographs of Wigan RLFC in the forties, is that we're looking at players who were mature men. Bear in mind I covered Wigan in the sixties and photographed three finals at Wembly, at which the players were all older than I, but when I see today's Ruby teams, at any level, including National squads, they all look like teenagers, kind of reminiscent of little unions teams in my day, like The old Boys, or Orrell.
Lots of wonderful images, I owonder who the photographers were in those far off days.

back row lt to rt: Street, W Blan, Ashcroft, Woosey, Mather,Hurst, Barton.. Seated:Nordgren, Ryan, Gee, Cunliffe, Roughley, Hilton, Ratcliffe,.Front : Alty, Constance.

This was the 1951/52 season and it would be 5 years before Wigan saw silverware again (the Challenge Cup in 1958), despite signing the fantastic Billy Boston in 1953.
In 51/52 they finished 2nd in the League with Jim Sullivan as coach, they won the League Championship play-off against Bradford Northern winning 13-6.
The Lancashire Cup beating Leigh 14-6 and were the Lancashire League winners, perhaps the other trophy is for winning the Charity match at the beginning of the season - a guess.
The man with glasses extreme right may be Bert Barnes the skipman and one photographer I know who took a number of Wigan's photos was Tom Gerard (a Wiganer), he usually left his initials in the bottom right corner of his photos, there was another photographer but his name eludes me at present.

A few of my remaining grey cells must have joined together because the name of the other photographer that I couldn't remember has suddenly come to me, it was J. Blackburn.